Gustavo Dudamel, Eloisa Maturen teaming up for 'Death and the Maiden'

Gustavo Dudamel and his wife, Eloisa Maturen, shown in 2013 outside Disney Hall, are collaborating on the play "Death and the Maiden," set for the fall. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Gustavo Dudamel and his wife, Eloísa Maturén, are teaming up on a production of Ariel Dorfman's play "Death and the Maiden" that is expected to open in the fall in Hollywood. The production will star Maturén, who is also co-producing, and will feature a set designed by architect Frank Gehry.

"Death and the Maiden" will open at the Stella Adler Los Angeles Lab Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in the fall, but a publicist said no date has been set yet. Maturén will play the role of Paulina, a former political prisoner who is convinced that a mysterious visitor to her home was the man who tortured and raped her.

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Preliminary work on the production began last week, according to the publicist. She said Gehry was present at the meeting and is working on design sketches for the set. Dudamel, who is music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will be composing music for the production.

Alberto Arvelo will direct the production. A Venezuela native, Arvelo was at the helm of the recent movie "The Liberator," a biopic about Simon Bolivar, which featured an original score by Dudamel. Arvelo also directed a 2010 documentary about Dudamel and the El Sistema music education program.

Dudamel and Maturén are currently in the midst of a divorce -- Maturen filed papers in L.A. Superior Court in March. They were married in 2005 and have a son, Martin, who was born in 2011.

Maturén has worked as a dancer and journalist in her native Venezuela, and has recently branched out into acting.

Dorfman's play takes place in an unnamed country, but it is widely believed to represent Chile following the fall of the Pinochet regime. The drama has strong thematic connections to the Schubert quartet from which it takes its title. The character Paulina recounts that her torturer would play the piece when he brutalized and raped her.

The play was first seen in London in 1991 with actress Juliet Stevenson, and premiered on Broadway the following year in a production starring Glenn Close. It was made into a movie in 1994, starring Sigourney Weaver and directed by Roman Polanski.